


DNAtalia

by BlueSakura007



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Comedy, Eventual Relationships, Eventual Sex, F/M, Genetics, M/M, Mind Control, Romantic Comedy, Shapeshifting, Sitcom, Superpowers, Telekinesis
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-21
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:40:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26584543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueSakura007/pseuds/BlueSakura007
Summary: The world is populated with a race of extraordinary people, who are capable of equally extraordinary things: they have varying superpowers, but some have super strength, some can control fire or even creatures or people’s minds, and some can levitate all of their own will. When one particular individual with the power of transforming into a wolf comes across a house which is home to fifteen other superhumans like herself, her world becomes so much bigger when she joins them as the newest housemate - and so much more wacky, as well.
Relationships: Austria/Hungary (Hetalia), England (Hetalia)/Original Female Character(s), Finland/Sweden (Hetalia), Germany (Hetalia)/Original Female Character(s), Russia (Hetalia)/Original Female Character(s)
Kudos: 1





	1. Chapter 1 ~ The Secluded House

It was early September in 2021, and the room was mostly dark.

Most of the windows were currently being covered with their respective curtains, turning these as a whole into about half a dozen little barriers against the cold warmth outside. It's a rather funny expression - 'cold warmth' - two words which reside in the same sentence but which also completely contradicted each other in terms of their definitions. To be more specific, the reason for the use of this funny expression is due to the nature of the weather outside: the sun was indeed shining its light down upon the land, but nonetheless the temperature in the air was a little bit on the chilly side.

This is because, my reader, this dark room with the aforementioned self-contradicting weather outside is located in Britain.

"So we have one more space available, then?" One of the ten people currently gathered in the room for a meeting enquired to the others around her whilst perched in an armchair; their five other friends who lived in this same residence were still in their beds at this moment, either still asleep or beginning their process of re-emerging into consciousness. This person who'd just spoken had long hair, whose most accurate word to describe it was definitely 'floofy', which was partially held in place by a black headband and its blonde colour was synchronising slightly with the negligible amount of sunlight touching its right edges. 

"To sum it up, yes, we do." A male one, with hair whose own colour was a darker equivalent, replied with a nod of his head. He was sitting on the sofa a few feet away, with three other people gathered around him on this same piece of furniture. His eyes were pretty hard to miss to say the least, as you'd be able to clearly make out two little green glints glowing slightly in the reflected meagre amount of light from the windows. "The advert's fully prepared now, so it's time for us to make it publicly available." 

"Via the estate agent's in the centre of town, I take it?" Another female, one whose hair was significantly darker and who was sat the closest to him, asked. 

"Precisely." 

"And then we'll just have to wait and see who accepts the offer?" This same woman next to him asked and additional question; her own eyes emitted their own tiny little green glimmer. 

"Correctumundo." 

"Perhaps this new person could end up being a beautiful mademoiselle as glamorous as moi..." A male thought out loud with a contented sigh, perched in the other armchair on the other side of the sofa with one of his legs over the other as he simultaneously twirled a few locks of his hair. 

"Is that all you think about?" A slightly taller woman standing next to the first person who'd spoken, the one with the floofy blonde hair, enquired with a tiny quirk of her eyebrows. 

"That question's past the point of return." Responded another man. This one - whose pale coloured hair stood out due to being immaculate and also a little bit shiny - was standing next to where the male currently twirling his hair was sitting. 

"Ve~ where did I leave my phone?" Suddenly, everyone gathered in this room found themselves squinting in order to adjust to the brightness which had just been abruptly created by the owner of this voice flicking the light switch into the 'on' position, in order to search for this aforementioned lost item of his. 

"Feliciano, we're having a conference! It's supposed to remain mysterious like in the movies!" The hair-twirling man scolded him, although not too harshly. 

"I'm sorry, I didn't know you guys were in here!" The one apparently named Feliciano stammered in reply. "I'm so sorry, I'll be gone in a momento and then you can continue being mysterious!" 

"It's okay, we were pretty much done anyway." The dark-haired woman on the sofa reassured him whilst turning her head to face him, before catching him up to speed, "We were talking about how that advert for the last remaining space here is now finished." 

"Yeah - Arthur's going to put it up at the estate agent's later." The floofy-haired female also told him, her companion standing next to her additionally nodding her head. 

"And then it's a waiting game." Another male, this one standing next to one of the windows and simultaneously leaning casually against the wall behind him, said; a few of the people around him were keeping their distance from him right now compared to the others, and this was because of the fact that a tarantula, which just so happened to be his pet, was resting peacefully on his right shoulder. Even though his fellow inhabitants of the house had gotten used to its presence by now and treated it nicely, but it still rendered a few of them ill at ease.

"You took the words right out of my mouth, mate." The male with the green eyes and dark blonde hair looked at him and gave his response. 

Several hours later, another now empty glass made contact with the mahogany table on which it had been sitting before its contents had vanished into a human digestive system. The aforementioned human who'd just been holding this glass then continued to stare, long and hard, into the eyes of her opponent, who was doing the exact same thing - the tension in the air was, to put it simply, thick as hell, and all the other people around them were gathered around the table, focusing their eyes intently on what was going on. 

This first female who'd put the glass down took another full glass from off the table, while still glaring straight at her opponent - who belonged to the same gender - and quickly downed this one's contents in addition: milk, summer fruits juice, lemon juice and vanilla essence all mixed together into an overall repulsive blend. The observers' eyes all remained wide. 

Afterwards, she went to grab another glass of the previously mentioned mixture, having finished nine of them so far, but her mind suddenly decided to stop her hand from moving once it was almost in contact with the glass, giving her a full reminder of how dreadful the last couple of minutes had felt when the mixture slid down her throat and past her tastebuds; it was this that also caused her hand to simply drop onto the table and admit defeat.

"I can't do it, I'm through." She said, shaking her head to reinforce her words while addressing her opponent. "Finish those and you win." 

This opponent, an ever so slightly younger woman, took a moment to push her black-rimmed glasses further up the bridge of her nose before regaining her fixed glare into the eyes of the one she was up against - the silence amongst the observers around them still remained firmly in place, if not intensifying now. Jennifer Integra, deciding that once she'd finished the last three full glasses of the mixture it would be over, reached for the first one and held it in her hand; she'd already put away seven of them, and now even just the colour repulsed her a bit. That unearthly blend of amber with a dark red tone, all being rendered slightly paler by the milk...

"Want to give up?" The opponent who'd admitted defeat, who was a year older than her and had shoulder-length hair, asked, sensing her hesitation. 

"Not on your nelly." Jen responded determinedly. She tipped the glass towards her mouth and, trying to slide the contents past her tastebuds as quickly as possible despite how much of a fight the grim taste was putting up - it obviously had a subconscious desire to be analysed - and roughly put the empty glass back down onto the table. The second of the three remaining glasses was then reached for in addition, during which her glare was still maintained, and when she attempted to ingest this one as well, she could momentarily feel her eyes rolling back and her gag reflex kicking and screaming against the liquid currently occupying her mouth, although she somehow managed to swallow it nonetheless. 

And then there was the last one. This was the tiebreaker, the one whose acceptance or rejection would decide whether or not she was the winner. 

Despite how supremely daunting even looking at it right now was for her, she nevertheless managed to pick the glass up in her hand and, with the strongest determined glare of them all, she took a moment to brace herself before, slowly but surely, she let the liquid slide into her mouth - for a few horrifying moments she genuinely felt as if she was going to vomit, which consequently made her vision swim and her eyes roll back in her head at a much larger magnitude compared to when they did the same during the second glass. Then, before she was even fully aware of it in her consciousness, it had finally vanished down her throat.

Jen threw her arms up into the air, with clenched fists, in victory, to which she was greeted by shouts of triumph from the observers around her and her opponent who'd placed their bets in her favour, and while this opponent of hers placed her head in one of her hands in disappointment, with this hand's connecting elbow on the table, these observers began to applaud. 

"So I basically now have fifty quid in my pocket from tonight; that bet I mentioned to you yesterday that I'd be in tonight was basically where me and Tia had to drink a weird mixture we came up with on the spur of the moment and the one out of the two of us who ended up drinking the most glasses of it would be the winner." Jen was holding her mobile phone up to her right ear and informing her aunt of this, over the phone, as she was currently her way down the pavement on the street which led back from where she'd been a minute ago to where she lived; this aforementioned previous place she'd just been was her workplace, the pub which resided in the Northern end of her home village, and her working days, after coming back from college on those days, were 4:30 to 8 PM from Monday to Friday. This current evening was a Thursday, and she'd stayed behind a few minutes later than this in order to participate in the bet. 

"I should've known you'd be involved in a bet that mad." Aunt Nicole replied from the other end, in the midst of a little portion of laughter. "I take it you're a bit pleased with yourself?" 

"Oh, to say the least, yep." On her end of the phone line, Jen nodded her head and added her own small laugh at the end of her sentence. "Seriously, drinking all those glasses of that stuff would've taken anyone a massive amount of willpower." 

"So it was a Chuck Norris-level challenge?" 

"Not quite up that high on the leaderboard, but to put it simply, almost there. Ooh!" She exclaimed this last word to herself as she abruptly caught sight of something interesting, just for a tenth of a second. Specifically, this 'something interesting' was one of the advertised properties to rent in the estate agent's front window on that street. "I just need to take a note of something quickly, I'll see you when I get back in a few minutes." 

"Okay, love you." 

Jen was first to hang up the line, then proceeding to close her phone's cover and place it back inside one of the back pockets of her jeans, although it took a moment or two to accomplish this, because she wasn't fully paying attention to what she was doing - her eyes were far too busy eyeing up the particular newsagent's article in this large window she was facing. 

The earlier-mentioned male with the dark blonde hair and the gleaming green eyes put down his teacup to properly check his laptop screen as his ears were met with the little notification ding of a newly arrived email. Thinking for a few brief moments that this aforementioned new email was just going to be another advert for vouchers or some other kind of detritus of a similar nature, his facial expression was initially one of boredom, with his eyelids ever so slightly closed due to it additionally being late in the evening; this soon morphed almost instantaneously, though, into absolute full consciousness and equal attentiveness. 

"That was quicker than I expected..." He remarked to himself in mild surprise, as even just the subject line was already enough to tip him off about what the email's actual message revolves around: ' Estate Agent's Advert '. 


	2. Chapter 2 ~ Time to Meet the Locals

**_[Background score:]_ **

The very next morning after the events which had unfolded during the previous night, the seventeen year old who'd won the bet against her coworker drowsily rubbed the sand out of her eyes before proceeding to splash cold water from the bathroom sink's tap onto her face, both for washing and for the purpose of fully waking her up. She looked back at herself in the mirror, her daily case of bedhead being blatantly obvious even _without_ having to use this mirror to determine so, and momentarily rubbed the bridge of her nose for the same self-waking purposes. And last but not least, she once more placed her glasses onto her face.  
The sounds from way back when were, in the part of her brain that processed and stored memories from external stimuli, still as loud and clear as they'd been at their time of occurence. One small part of this plethora was a police siren, and then this was followed up by a child yelling and screaming, and a vague recollection of blinding blue lights with some red. 

She hurriedly took off her glasses for a moment and threw more of the freezing cold tap water into her face to snap her mind away from this. 

"Morning." Jenny greeted Aunt Nicole once, a few minutes later, the former had now changed into her typical everyday wear: black leggings and a casual shirt, with a large majority of these shirts of hers - including the one she was currently wearing - having some kind of sarcastic or, more often than not, geeky design on the front. In this particular case it was the seal for the NX-01 from Star Trek: Enterprise. 

"Hello. You alright then?" Nicole walked into the kitchen and, upon approaching the younger female, gave her a quick greeting kiss on the cheek. She sported bright brown eyes, her jet black hair was in a short pixie cut which was mostly swept to the right side of her head, and she was now fully dressed in her usual attire as well: in her case, this was blue denim jeans, a purple and white striped short-sleeved shirt with a dark grey hoodie over the top and, as the daily ritual for this time in the morning before being due at work, she was currently wearing a pair of cream coloured slippers with a pink ribbon each on them both. 

"Yeah, thanks. Oh, by the way, if you get any phone calls or emails from a bloke named Arthur Kirkland while I'm at college today could you please pass on his message to me when I get home?" 

While Jen laid out the tea mugs for this - after she'd just spent the last few seconds retrieving them from out of the cupboard in front of her, at eye level - Nicole set to work with filling up the nearby kettle with water from the tap next to her, like they did every morning. "Why? Is that who you said last night you'd sent an email to after you read about him in the newsagent's, then?" 

"Yeah, that's him. You know that big house you walk past if you're on your way into town from here, that one with the rabbit garden statue next to a long driveway? Well he owns the place and he's apparently put up a space for rent there; the monthly rent's not too hefty and it looks nice so my first thought when I saw the advert was, 'Why not?'" 

"Oh yeah I know which one you mean! Good on you." Nicole complimented.

"What's happening?" Her husband, Uncle Max, also walked into the kitchen as he, too, approached the sink, and he used it to refill a glass of water that he usually kept on his bedside table. 

"Last night she applied for renting an available space in that big house with the little rabbit statue out at the front, and now she's waiting for the owner of the place to send her a message back to confirm things." 

"That's good then." Max added, in the same manner in which his wife had congratulated their niece a few moments ago. "Here, he doesn't know about your little quirk, does he?"

Jenny let out a small chuckle at the words 'little quirk' and replied with, "No, I still haven't told anyone." 

You see, the most notable thing about Jen was that she was different to the others in her village, because of a strange but nifty ability she and she alone possessed: she was capable of transforming her entire body into that of a grey wolf, and not only that, but this capability also allowed her to morph either part of or the entirety of the skin and nails on one or both of her arms into, respectively, wolf fur and long, razor-sharp claws. This had been with her since as far as she could remember, as she was only a tiny toddler still running around on stubby legs when brief, involuntary changes began to take place in her body - she would spent a couple of afternoons squirming around on her little bed when every single limb would feel a burning, tingling pain in them which had no fixed point on the 'sharp or dull' scale at all, and when her parents went to a doctor about this, they were told that it was simply growing pains. But after that, her ability gradually came into more of a full potential throughout the next few years of her life, and she and her close family had decided to refer to it as her 'little quirk'. 

"You could possibly ask him whether he's a dog person, though. Just in case it comes up at some point." Uncle Max joked, then putting a little portion of his own laughter to use and consequently making her and Aunt Nicole smile in addition. 

Inside the house in which its inhabitants had discussed their impending advert yesterday, an atmosphere of casual warmth and general relaxation and laid-back moods had additionally taken up residence there late in the afternoon on this same day, as it did on a very large majority of other days at this time. The time currently stood at about 4:15 PM, which meant that whichever housemates hadn't yet returned from where they were occupied on weekdays would be making their reappearances within roughly the next fifteen minutes. 

"That Stephanie March dudette's a pretty neat actress!" One of these housemates, an American with slightly unkempt dark blonde hair, glimmering, youthful blue eyes, a pair of silver-rimmed glasses on his face and an ahoge balancing in his hair, commented as he was sat on one of the lounge's sofas, his eyes focusing on the screen of the TV a few meters in front of it. 

"Yes, she is." The other male who was sitting in an armchair a few feet away, in the middle of reading the fifth Harry Potter book, replied idly. He was the same man who, during the previous night, had seen Jen's email which had been a response to the space-to-rent estate agent advert, and he was British. "Hang on a minute, Stephanie March? That's Stephanie Beatriz!" After the corner of his eye caught sight of the fact that the man with the ahoge and the glasses was watching Brooklyn Nine Nine, his hint of idleness had ceased as he pointed at the TV's screen while saying this last part. 

"What? No dude, that's Stephanie March, I know it!" The one he was addressing protested in confusion at this statement. 

"Stephanie March is in Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, you twit!" Responded the Briton. "It's Stephanie _Beatriz_ there, in that Brooklyn Nine Nine!" 

"It's Stephanie _March_!" 

"It's bloody Beatriz!" 

"March!" 

"Beatriz!" 

"What are you two debating this time?" A woman with long brown hair and green eyes, another of the housemates, walked into the living room to pick up some magazines she'd left on a table at the side of the room as she asked this, hearing the commotion. Her own accent was a Hungarian one, due to her originating from Debrecen. 

"Here, Elizabeta, have a look at this scene of Brooklyn Nine Nine Alfred's watching; who's that actress there, Stephanie Beatriz or Stephanie March?" The British one out of the two men pointed at the screen again, which the female named Elizabeta then looked at.

"That's neither, it's Melissa Fumero. See?" 

Sure enough, the duo had indeed been bickering over the wrong character: Melissa Fumero portrayed the character Amy Santiago, who they'd spent the last few seconds confusing with Rosa Diaz, a completely different character who was played by Stephanie Beatriz. 

"Oh yeah..." The American, whose name was Alfred, said quietly now that this revelation was brought to light.

"You berk, that was Melissa Fumero all along! And you call yourself a fan of B99..." Arthur, the British member of the pair, sighed at how hopeless this lodger of his could be sometimes. 

"Anyway, when is that applicant for the available space coming round again?" Enquired Elizabeta. 

"She sent me a text a few minutes ago saying she's only a couple of minutes away now, so I'll have to look a bit lively any second now ish." Arthur sat fully upright in his chair and put his Harry Potter book down, in preparation for having to get up in the next couple of minutes, and he used the fingers on his right hand to flatten down some of the strings of hair on top of his head that were poking out untidily. Only a couple of these obeyed and returned down to their point of origin, whilst the rest seemed to be unable to be tamed, remaining firmly in their place; these disobedient hairs obviously wanted to continue adhering to the guidelines put forth by his normally messy hairstyle as a whole. His hair usually seemed to, in a way, be a sort of reflection of the country's weather patterns: somewhat untidy but neatly so, the same way British weather was typically cold but with warm spells. 

"Is this new dudette, y'know, one of us?" Alfred asked, turning his head to look at him. 

"I don't know yet, I think I'll find out when she arrives." 

Speaking of which, a few meters away from the front of the house - having just emerged out of the trees lining the long driveway from the side of the road it began on - the girl stood in the clearing between these woods, which the beginning of the driveway seemed to lead to, and gazed in awe at the sight facing her: in this clearing, the house perched, no, _towered_ in the centre like a national landmark, giving off the impression that it dominated this landscape within about a five mile radius. She'd seen the photo of it on the advert at the newsagent's, but seeing it in person, with her own eyes, was an entirely different matter - it appeared almost Victorian in design, based on the gothic touch it had which manifested in the dark grey, almost black roof tiling formed into the shape of spires in a couple of places, and the framing of the windows currently glinting in the afternoon sunlight looked very clearly vintage. Every single square inch of it was in perfect condition, as if the construction of the house as a whole had only recently been completed, so it seemed to have aged like a fine wine. 

"Time to meet the locals, then." She said to no one in particular, making sure that the white fleece she was wearing wasn't curled up in any places at all and pulling the zip down slightly, so as to avoid any chance of getting warm in the next few minutes, as she approached the front door, becoming even more spellbound because of the house's rather large size becoming revealed as it got closer and closer. Additionally, for the last few seconds since she'd arrived, the pit of her stomach had begun to experience a tingle, which she wasn't completely sure about but which she guessed to be another effect of her amazement. 

The doorbell's clear ring resounded in the lounge, which was fairly nearby to the front door. 

"That must be her." Said Elizabeta, smiling at the thought of another possible housemate, before she then picked up the last remainder of her magazines and disappeared out of the room again a moment or two later. 

Arthur, knowing that this was his cue, got up from the armchair and made for the direction the front door was in, stopping at the last moment before he disappeared around the corner and looking back at Alfred defiantly. "It's still Stephanie _Beatriz_ who's in Brooklyn Nine Nine, you just check the credits when they come."

"It's Stephanie _March_ , dude."

"Beatriz!" The British one shouted back one last time before he went on his way out of the lounge, fully disappearing from Alfred's sight. 

"March." The latter grinned to himself, proceeding to open up his left hand and grab his glass of Diet Pepsi from the same table the Hungarian had collected her magazines off of. 

This was accomplished by the glass coming straight into the palm of Alfred's hand, not unlike a moth drawn to the light from a lamp, without him moving any other part of his body at all. 

The front door suddenly opened, momentarily startling Jen as her mind had been elsewhere during the brief wait, revealing to her a man standing there who was dressed in a white button-up blouse, black jeans with a belt of the same colour and a pair of red tartan slippers. His hair was the only thing existing in contrast to the rest of him: his clothes and his overall mannerisms even in just this split second after he opened the door from the inside looked - respectively - neatly ironed and confident in a preppy manner, giving off the impression that he might have originated from one of the higher social classes, whilst his hair was partly the same but it had a sense of messiness about it, as if he'd only just risen out of bed despite it currently being the middle of the afternoon, if not early evening. 

"Hello." She greeeted him, slightly awkwardly due to him appearing to be a few years older than her, not to mention the additional fact that she found it a little bit more difficult interacting with members of the opposite gender who weren't her family. "You must be Arthur Kirkland; I'm Jenny Integra." 

"Oh yes, that's me. Delighted to meet you." Arthur's accent, whilst her own was middle-of-the-road, was more upper-class sounding whilst at the same time as he was speaking he affably extended his right hand, which she then shook. "Shall I show you round?" 

"Yeah, yeah, of course, let's start." Still feeling slightly awkward due to the previously mentioned factors, she felt her words initially tumbling out of her mouth. Unknown to her, Arthur had also just begun to feel a tingling sensation deep within himself once he had opened the door and was now in her presence (along with her own simultaneously intensifying), confirming the suspicions residing in his mind. 

"I understand that this is our first face-to-face conversation, not to mention almost the _beginning_ of that conversation, so I'm sorry to ask such a candid question so soon," The male with the emerald eyes, at the same time as closing the front door behind them after she'd entered past it into the house, said this with an amiable chuckle. "But have you ever... good God how do I put this... have you ever felt... different to everyone else?"

Jen turned her head to the right to look at him. "What do you mean...?" 

"Have you ever done something extraordinary, that you think others would find to be preposterous if you told them about it?" 

She continued to look straight at him, her eyes still fixed onto his face as she was now also barely blinking - it was no longer just confusion that was circulating inside of her, and instead this confusion was now joined by a jolt of realisation in the pit of her stomach and a shiver nesting on her spine: could her own suspicions that she'd been holding for so many years before now be true? Was this their eventual confirmation in some way? 

"I have." She admitted in a somewhat more quiet volume of voice. "Why...?"

Arthur smiled at her in a cordial manner again, as he'd done a few moments ago when they shook hands outside the door. "Because I needed to know whether or not that was the case before I told you something in return: I'm preposterous as well." 

"Basically everyone here is." Off to the left, someone else spoke out; a woman, based on the sound of the voice, whose accent was unable to be exactly determined at this moment because of it containing numerous different elements. This sound attracted the attention of both of them, causing the blue-eyed female who Arthur has just been conversing with to see that there was indeed a fellow female standing there, standing a few feet away on the left hand side in the archway separating this front porch area from the kitchen, with the lounge to the right and a fairly large staircase directly in front of the porch. This other woman who'd just appeared first stood out because of her hair: in contrast to Arthur's own partially messy, blonde coloured hair, hers was waist-length and was a deep, dark brown, and it gleamed faintly in a few places due to reflecting the sunlight streaming into the house through the front door's windows. Despite it being predominantly neat and more wavy than anything, there was a slight sense of wildness to it. Her eyes were the same colour as his, if not being ever so slightly paler - although this was nearly undetectable - and she appeared to be a couple of inches taller than Jenny, and in addition, her apparel consisted of blue denim jeans, pure white socks and a red loose shirt.

What she did next, though, was the surprising thing: whilst still looking at the pair and showing her own small but pleasant smile, she held up her left hand and, after rubbing her left fingers together, the tips of these fingers suddenly ignited like the top of a lighter, forming into numerous tiny flames after existing as mere embers on her fingers half a second ago. 

Jen's eyebrows raised themselves quickly at this point. 

"Wowza." 


	3. Chapter 3 ~ People Like Us

"So you're basically the leader of everyone here?" Jen asked about a minute later, addressing Arthur; to her, the sense of awe which she'd been subjected to a few moments beforehand was still as fresh as an incoming sea tide, although, with every passing moment during this current conversation of theirs, it was beginning to become replaced by warm relief that she seemed to not be the only one in the world with a bit of a unique quirk. 

"To sum it up, I am, yes." Arthur, still smiling amiably, replied. "I'm not the landlord or anything - I rent the place like everyone else here instead of owning it - but I was the first one to live here and I manage the technical aspects of the renting." 

"And you can also control fire?" She then addressed the woman who'd appeared a minute ago and displayed her unique ability, and whose name was introduced to be Alexandra ("Everyone just calls me Sandra for short, though," She'd said at that time with her own friendly twinkle). 

"Yeah, that's right!" The older of the two females responded with a nod of her head, her smile from a minute ish beforehand still nesting on her face. "It does mean I have to be especially careful when I'm refuelling my car, though." She added with a small chuckle. 

"All fifteen of us who live here are a collective group of people who have these kinds of special gifts." Said Arthur. "Some of us joined this group coincidentally but the rest of us began living here because we sought each other out; our respective gifts emerged either soon after birth or during our childhood, or didn't kick off until later in life, but what people like us all have in common is that when another one of us is nearby, we can sense it, for lack of a better term." 

"When I came up to the house just now I swore I could feel something like that! I don't fully know whether what I felt was that exactly, but it was like something inside of my gut was telling me something interesting was here, you know?" Taking a moment to wipe the lenses of her glasses for a moment after noticing some subtle fingerprint stains, Jenny said this to Arthur at the same time before placing them back onto her face. 

"No, you're right - that instinct you felt is indeed what I'm referring to." He nodded in response. "People like you and me and the others here are all pretty much a part of the same offshoot species, and I think our common ability to sense each other's nearby presence is another gift from Mother Nature." 

"Mother Nature?" She repeated in her replying query. 

"We have varying theories on why people like us have these powers - one of them is that we're the subjects of some rejected evolution ideas of hers."

"And one of our other theories is that we're actually a species of aliens born to human parents, but we're mostly leaning towards the one involving Mother Nature." Another woman, one who Jen guessed was a couple of inches ish shorter than herself, had suddenly appeared in their midst. Her hair was roughly as long as hers, albeit slightly more curly, and was roughly around the same colour and shade, and her eyes were a striking pale green. "I'm Elizabeta, by the way. Elizabeta Héderváry." This other newcomer introduced herself and extended her hand, which the youngest out of the four people currently present shook accordingly, before Elizabeta used her other one for beckoning behind her, in the direction of where there appeared to be a back door. "Shall we go outside into the garden for Arthur to continue?"  
  


The garden area at the back of the house was equally as magnificent as the building itself. Due to it only recently beginning to edge into the Autumn section of the year, the numerous trees on either side of the garden were still keeping a tight grip on their lush green leaves, these trees mostly being oaks but with a couple of what would later bloom into blossom ones being situated here and there. A pond was located at the bottom of the garden, which was inhabited by partially-bloomed water lilies and was roughly about twenty-five feet away from the back of the house, and the lawn was home to trellises off at the side adorned with red and white roses, who were all in different stages of blooming. A few of them were slightly wilting, but this did next to nothing in terms of counteracting the rest of the garden's beauty. There were additionally a small group of other people down near to the bottom of it, busying themselves with what seemed to be a small agricultural food area on the right hand side. 

"Did this place belong to an aristocrat or some form of wealthy landowner at some point?" Jenny turned to the male, basing this query on the noticeably posh architecture of the building itself and also on the gorgeousness of the greenery in front of her. 

"This house and these grounds used to be my family's, about a century or two ago." Arthur beamed to himself - the sight of the garden never got old, and he'd been there the longest compared to all of the others. "Most of my ancestors from back then were ability users like us, and a very large majority of them even had the same specific power as my own: necromancy." 

"Artie can see and talk to ghosts." Elaborated Sandra. "Apparently they also sometimes speak to him in his dreams, but it's mostly a case of when he happens to cross paths with them in the real world during the day. And he's also one of the ability users in the world who happen to have to powers; they're pretty rare, though, so there's only something like a handful of them out there in the world." 

"There's _two_? What's this other one you have?" The latest arrival at the house thought she'd seen the last of the things that could renew her feelings of surprise that day, but obviously she was wrong. 

"Being able to see magical creatures like dragons and fairies, that kind of thing, which after some Google searches we think is called mythical zoolingualism. You'd be surprised how friendly they can be once you get on their good side, even the dragons." The necromancer himself answered. 

In the time in which the whole discussion had taken place, Jen's heavily fiction-fed mind had already come up with similar cases of this whole thing from the top of her head and smiled at those references. "So because you're the leader and it's a place where ability users can come to live, then it's basically like Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children?" 

"Oh yes, I've read those books as well!" Arthur nodded. "Come to think of it I suppose I am the equivalent of Alma Peregrine here." 

"Arthur." Another voice, turning out to be male this time, spoke as he approached: this man was slightly shorter and had long, dark brown hair tied up into a low ponytail draped over his shoulder along with olive brown eyes. He seemed to be one of the people who'd a few seconds ago been down at the bottom of the garden. "I'm about to start cooking tonight's dinner; do you want me to make it for fifteen or sixteen people?" She couldn't fully put her finger on it at first, but the female Briton guessed after a couple of seconds that the accent with which he spoke was most likely a Chinese one. 

"Do you want to stay for dinner?" Arthur turned towards the one in the glasses. 

"I think I can spare the time, yeah, I'll just need to text my aunt to tell her I'll be late getting back. I hope I'm not imposing, though." 

"Of course not, Jenny." After this reassurance, he turned back to address the man with the long hair. "Sixteen, thank you Yao." 

This shorter one nodded respectfully at Jen and smiled cordially. "I will see you in an hour's time." He proceeded towards the house's back door.

"That was Yao Wang - his gift is to accelerate the growth of flowers and crops, so the rest of us help out too but he's mostly in charge of cooking here." Elizabeta said. 

"How many unique powers are there out of all fifteen of you?" 

"Almost as many as that, but slightly more if you count my pair." Arthur responded. "Some of us can do a couple of different things with them, so sometimes it's hard to tell whether they're two separate abilities or whether they're just different aspects of the same one, tied together. But the long and short of it is, anyone is welcome here whether they have a gift or not," that openly friendly grin made an encore. "And you, in particular, are about to spend roughly the next hour finding out just how big the world really is in terms of the former." 


	4. Chapter 4 ~ The K-Men

All sixteen of the house's inhabitants, including the newcomer, had settled down together a few minutes prior to this present moment at the dining room table, which was as equally grand as the exterior of the house itself. 

"We sort of like to think of ourselves as sort of like those fictional superheroes, the X-Men." Said Elizabeta as she simultaneously used one hand to stick her fork into a potato which had been sitting on her plate: tonight's dinner at the house consisted of peas, gammon slices and roast potatoes which Yao had grown and brought in out of the back garden. 

"With Arthur as Professor Xavier, I take it?" Jen asked, her face lighting up at the fact that a movie reference had entered into her midst. 

"See I told you, dude! I told you I wasn't the only one who'd understand that!" Piped up Alfred, who'd also been introduced to her by now after they'd met each other a few minutes ago in the lounge. 

"Except those people are called the X-Men because of the initial of Professor Xavier's surname, so in our case because of Arthur's own surname I suppose we would instead be called the K-Men." Another introduceé, a young Japanese man named Kiku Honda who was apparently able to control electricity, added. He had smooth dark brown eyes and short, neat jet-black hair with bangs, and the newcomer's first impression of him was that he was a shy individual but nonetheless friendly and respectful enough. 

"Based on that reaction just then it looks like you and me are going to be the duo known as Film Buffs United, Alfred." The female with the glasses opined while chuckling, in order to sprinkle in a humorous element to the conversation which, to her surprise, she seemed to be handling rather well so far. 

"There you are, now you've got someone to fully rant and rave with!" Alfred was addressed by Elizabeta's younger sister Eleanor, a girl roughly around Jenny's age but a little bit older with a frizzy mass of blonde hair, blue eyes a bright and bubbly personality by the looks of it, and, like her sibling, the ability to levitate above the ground. And this younger one of the Héderváry sisters additionally had a little bit of a prior connection to Jen:

"You mean like how I did to you back in primary?" This latter girl herself smiled as another humorous element. 

"Apparently they went to different high schools and haven't heard from each other for years until now, but those two were friends for a little bit back when they were in primary school." Sandra explained to the others around her who were unfamiliar with this prior connection. 

"Yeah. It's got to be... roughly about seven years since the last time we properly saw each othe-" Eleanor was nearly at the end of this sentence when all of a sudden, the smile which had been adorning her face quickly vanished and was replaced by widened eyes and a fearful frown when she saw what had just appeared in front of her on the table.

" _Oh god_. Where did that come from?" Jen gasped when she noticed this thing in front of the blonde, which had just begun to come towards her across the table - it was a tarantula. All black and hairy with brown tips on its eight equally hairy legs. She shrank back into her chair in immense fear when it stopped right in front of her own plate and stared straight at her, and, curiously, she could've sworn she heard it make a little chirp noise at her. 

"Martin, I thought I told you to not let Ada walk around on the table when we're eating. Especially tonight!" Arthur, who was at the head of the table, said scoldingly as he turned his head towards one of the others nearby. 

"Okay, sorry, she just wanted to get a look at this new girl." Replied this other person the leader had just addressed, slightly defensively, and after he then looked straight at the tarantula for a couple of seconds without saying a word, it turned around and retreated back towards him, passing by several uneasy others in the process. Jenny got a look at this man who'd just spoken when the spider had reached him: even while sitting down he was visibly taller than the other fifteen, and he had brown eyes and slightly messy dark brown hair which had several cowlicks and which covered up his right eye. In front of these eyes sat a pair of black-framed glasses, as well. 

"That's Martin, the oldest out of us all; his own power is to manipulate spiders." The one sitting next to Jen on her left, a tall and muscular-built German who had introduced himself as Ludwig, said to her. He was a man who'd told her he possessed the gift of super strength, and initially she'd found herself reluctant to sit so close to him due to the combined factors that he was male, he was a stranger and, most prominently, his body build made him seem a bit intimidating to put it simply, but she'd found in the last few minutes that in actuality there was nothing to be intimidated about regarding him - being in his presence was also going well so far just like the dinner conversation in general, which meant this was another surprise to her. 

"Now you know I've told you before I don't like calling it manipulation." The man who seemed to own the tarantula as some kind of pet, his name having just been revealed to be Martin, responded to Ludwig's explanation. His own accent was quickly deduced by Jen to be an American one. "I mean the ability itself is officially called 'manipulation' if you wanna get technical, but there's no forceful commands or anything like that going on - it's basically just a case of asking nicely." The tarantula on the table proceeded to climb down onto his lap, and then it clambered upwards around his torso as if he were a tree until it arrived on his right shoulder. He didn't seem to tense up or show any kind of reaction even by a tiny amount during this climbing process, if anything he actually seemed to be _enjoying_ it, and when it got to the top of his shoulder he craned his head to look at it and beamed. "This is Ada. She's been my pet and a pretty good friend for the last twelve years now." He turned his head back to look at Jen as he spoke. 

"So you can communicate with spiders and basically ask them to do things?" This female human being resumed her normal sitting position now and couldn't help but just stare at how relaxed he was with the subject of her biggest fear being perched casually on his person. 

"That's right. The long and short of it is that it happens telepathically, but it's hard to explain how. I guess the best way to explain it is that it's like me and whichever spider I'm talking to in my mind are exchanging signals in some new kind of language only we can understand." Said Martin before he used his fork to put a small piece of gammon in his mouth. "But at least if you hear any of the others around the house making Home Alone jokes about me then now you'll understand why." He smiled and shrugged his shoulders marginally. 

"Good, because I think making Home Alone jokes around you is going to become one of my new hobbies now." Said Jen lightheartedly. "I mean once you put an idea like that in my head I've just got to do what I've got to do."   
Getting along this well with these fifteen people around her with such little effort left little room for doubt in her mind regarding what she had just spent the last half second deciding to do:   
Once this dinner was almost over, she was going to tell Arthur that she's decided to accept the offer to move in with them - that she has accepted the offer of becoming the latest and final housemate.


End file.
